


White Roses

by jetlagged_chinchilla



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Antagonistic Negan, Canon Divergence, Head Injury, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Insightful Judith, M/M, Memory Loss, POV Negan (Walking Dead), Post-Whisperers, Sad Rick Grimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21666082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetlagged_chinchilla/pseuds/jetlagged_chinchilla
Summary: The last thing Negan remembers is lying on his prison bed, plotting his escape and revenge. When he wakes up, he’s being told that it’s six years later and he’s married to Rick. Negan doesn’t believe a single ridiculous word of it, of course. But is it true, or is it all a big, elaborate joke?
Relationships: Rick Grimes/Negan
Comments: 18
Kudos: 154





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few things:  
> Rick never disappeared  
> Rick and Michonne were never together  
> Timelines are changed to fit the story

Flat on his back in the darkness, Negan stared up at the ceiling in his prison cell. The moonlight seeped through the bars of the window, casting a hazy, dim spotlight. He watched as a lone moth fluttered in, the insect bouncing along the ceiling in an erratic flight pattern for a minute or so, before finally finding its way back out the window and into the night.

Negan was left with the bitter thought - a fucking moth had more freedom than he did.

Anger flared as he thought of the man who had incarcerated him, Rick Grimes. Rick had won the war, had spared Negan a certain death, but it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart, heck no. Negan was to sit in this jail until he rotted, miserable and stewing in defeat. A dog sent to the kennel, neutered and muzzled.

He had been in this cell for three months now, if he had to guess. But it wouldn’t be for much longer. Negan had ideas. He was going to escape from here, out of this cell and out of Alexandria. He would climb over the wall to freedom, never to return to this godforsaken place ever again. He just needed to wait until the right moment, until the stars aligned in his favor.

The guards here weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. One of these days, someone was going to forget to lock the cell door, or become distracted, allowing Negan to grab the gun from their holster and shoot them point blank in the chest.

And after he escaped from the cell, he was going to pay a little visit to the Grimes household. He was going to find his Lucille. She was still out there, somewhere. Rick probably had her stashed at his house, in a closet or the attic. Negan would wait until night to break in, when everyone was fast asleep and dreaming their sorry little dreams.

And after Negan found Lucille, he was going to sneak up to Rick’s room, silent as a ghost with Lucille clutched firmly in his fist. He was going to hover over Rick’s sleeping form in the darkness, watch him snuggle beneath those cozy sheets, blissfully oblivious to the threat by his bedside.

And Negan would switch on the lights, flooding the room with his grand presence. Rick would jolt awake, sitting up in bed, his face a mask of surprise and confusion. It would take a second for his bleary, sleepy eyes to adjust, and when they did…

Negan would make _damn_ sure that the very last thing Rick would ever see, is Negan’s mug and Lucille flying towards his vision before everything turned black.

Sweet, sweet revenge. Negan chuckled to himself as he played out the scenario for the thousandth time in his mind. It was only a matter of time. No one would see it coming. He would finally get his brutal payback against Rick.

With that glorious thought dancing in his head, Negan fell asleep, his lips swept up in a vengeful smirk.

* * *

He awoke to voices nearby, eyes still closed. Hushed voices murmured beside him, impossible to decipher. He stirred, straining to lift his eyes open, an onslaught of brightness assaulting his pupils making him squeeze them shut again. Groaning, he tried once more, cracking his lids open slow and cautious.

There was a gasp and then silence as Negan regained full awareness, twinging in a strange pain as his sight focused.

“Negan,” someone uttered.

He took in his surroundings. This wasn’t the prison. He wasn’t lying on his little cot. He was in an actual bed in a well-lit room.

“He’s awake!” another voice exclaimed.

Alarmed, he sought to sit up, only to erupt in agony. “Ahh, fuck!” he burst out, shocks of pain exploding inside his head. Immediately, several people appeared at his side.

“Negan, lie down. It’s okay,” someone instructed, and Negan did so, falling back on the large, plush pillow behind him. He now noticed that his head was wrapped in bandages, a thick padding covering the side of his temple, partially obscuring his view.

He sucked in a hard breath through gritted teeth as the crashing pain subsided. Three people stood along the bedside on his left. There was a man in a white medical coat, presumably a doctor, analyzing him intently like a science project. Next to the doctor were the faces of Rick and Michonne, looking at Negan with odd expressions of joy. Odd, because they _never_ looked at him like that.

“What…the hell…is going on?” Negan rasped out.

“You were in an accident,” the doctor explained. “You fell from the watch tower. You’ve been in a coma for the past five days.”

Negan heard the words but they didn’t make sense. “Wh- _what?_ The fuck are you talking about?”

“Do you not remember?” At Negan’s puzzled expression, the doctor continued. “It’s okay. Some memory loss is common, especially with your head injury. What’s the last thing you remember?”

The seconds passed as Negan’s audience awaited his answer with wide eyes and bated breath, staring at him like he was about to tell the secrets of the universe. It was ridiculous.

“What are you pricks trying to play? I remember just fine,” Negan seethed with a dry throat, wincing at the pounding in his skull. “I was in that bunghole of a jail cell, trying to sleep on that shitty cot. So which one of you clobbered me in the middle of the night and dragged me here to the infirmary? That’s prisoner abuse, you know. You act like a bunch of goody-ass two-shoes but you’re all really some goddamn sick fucks.”

Negan was about to spout more accusations when he saw their expressions crumple, their initial smiles morphing into disturbance.

 _“What!”_ Negan almost shouted.

Michonne spoke up in a tentative, ginger voice. “Negan, you’re…kidding, right? You’re just making a joke?”

“Um, no,” Negan retorted, “I’m not kidding. It’s _you_ that’s fucking with _me_. Now can you drop the kool-aid flavored bullshit and tell me what the fuck happened to me?”

For several moments, everyone just looked at everyone else, the tension in the room blooming thick and acrid.

“Negan,” Michonne began, low and grave. “You haven’t been in that cell for six years.”

Negan could only squint quizzically through his pain, the words leaping over his head like they were a badly delivered punchline.

“It’s true,” Michonne continued, “that was six years ago. But last week, you fell from the tower. The railing was loose and it broke. It was probably about a three-story fall. We brought you to the infirmary. But you wouldn’t wake up. We thought…we thought you wouldn’t make it…”

Negan observed the three of them as he listened in stunned amazement. He thought Rick and Michonne looked a bit different than when he saw them last – different hair-styles, maybe some weight change. Their faces seemed more weathered and deep-set, but it could just be the terrible lighting in the room.

Alternating pairs of brown and blue eyes bore into him as Negan mentally spliced and dissected the story presented to him. Flickers of hope riddled everyone’s faces as it seemed Negan was trying hard to recall, reaching into the depths of his memories to validate what they were claiming.

But instead, Negan started to laugh. He laughed, head thrown back against the pillow, chest heaving in a fit of hilarity. “Holy shit,” he breathed, “Jesus fucking Christ. And I thought you dipfucks had no sense of humor.”

The harrowed looks on everyone’s faces only made Negan laugh harder. Especially Rick, who dropped his gaze to the floor, looking like he was about to throw up or cry. “You really had me at ‘six years’. Yes, siree, that was good.” He would have kept laughing if it didn’t hurt so much. Choking out a final chuckle, Negan settled down. “Look, I like a good practical joke like anyone else, but seriously, beating the shit outta me while I’m sleeping isn’t fucking cool. Not cool at all.”

A small sound came from the other side of the bed, a sound like a hiccup and a sob. Turning to his right, Negan saw a young child standing there – a girl, about nine or ten years old, glossy-eyed and watching Negan with the same broken look as the rest of them. She wore a hat that was too big for her - it seemed almost familiar – but Negan had never seen this child in his life.

He turned back to the adults in the room. “Who’s the kid?” he asked out of genuine curiosity, only to receive deeper looks of anguish, and a louder sob from the girl beside him.

“Negan, will you please excuse us?” the doctor announced quickly, gesturing for Rick and Michonne to exit the room in a hurry. They all left without another word, the girl following them out the door, practically running as if fleeing from something terrible.

Alone now, Negan laid back on the infirmary bed, wondering what in the holy hell was happening. What kind of absurdity was Rick and Michonne pulling on him, and why?

He raised a hand to touch the bandage wrap over his head. It hurt too much to sit up, let alone stand, so escaping from this room wasn’t going to happen today. His skull felt like it had been split open with a jackhammer. Someone had done a number on him alright, and it wasn’t difficult to guess who had beat him senseless while he slept – the same shit-weasel who led a slaughter of an outpost full of Negan’s men while they slept, of course.

He could hear the chattering on the other side of the door between Rick, Michonne and the doctor, rushed dialogue and fractured mutterings, but his ears couldn’t pick up any distinct words. They were likely rehearsing the next part of their bullshit act or devising more ways to fuck with him, Negan could only figure.

Lowering his arm down to his side, a flash of something shiny caught his eye. He lifted his left hand again, bringing it up to his face. There, on the fourth finger, was a ring.

Negan had never seen it before. It was quite clearly a man’s wedding band, a white metal ring with signs of wear, minute scratches on the surface creating a patina. Someone had placed this piece of jewelry on his finger while he was unconscious. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why. The last time he had worn a ring was when he was married to Lucille, and this was definitely not that ring.

He pulled the ring off in distaste, tossing it onto the bedside table.

Minutes passed and Negan was fuming angry with impatience, ready to yell for someone to come and explain what exactly in the hell was going on. After a while, the door opened and only Michonne re-entered, a tense yet somber note chiseled into her features. She moved a chair close to the foot of the bed and took a seat, her movements heavy and deliberate.

“So they volunteered you to chat with me?” Negan said, folding his arms. “Rick couldn’t dig his pathetic cojones out of his pants to face me, huh?”

“Rick wanted to talk to you very badly,” Michonne informed, “but I told him it would be better if I spoke to you first.”

“So are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to play another game of ‘fuck with Negan?’ By the way, great acting job by all of you earlier. Really, you should all win fucking Emmys for best daytime drama. And what’s with Rick? Jesus, he looked like someone ran over his puppy.”

Michonne remained stoic and calm. “Negan, we weren’t playing a game. Everything we said earlier was true. Look, you have to listen to me. I’ll tell you everything that happened, but you have to listen and try to remember.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Negan sighed in exasperation.

“Just. Listen,” Michonne punctuated, grave as a tomb. “Over six years ago we put you in that prison. You were supposed to remain there for the rest of your life.”

“Shit, would you quit it with the-“

“But then the Whisperers happened,” Michonne continued, ignoring interruptions. “They were a group of humans who wore the skins of walkers. They looked like walkers, they moved like walkers. We clashed with them. They killed our friends. And then their leader, Alpha, drew out their territory, said if we crossed to their side, they would go to war with us.

“And then there was a fire. We had to cross over to their land to extinguish it. But it started the war. They controlled a walker horde of tens of thousands. They were going to wipe us out. There was nothing we could do, no way we could fight them.”

“Jesus, what the fuck kind of freakshow fairy tale are you-“

“Then one night you escaped from your cell,” she pressed on. “And somehow you managed to find the Whisperers and infiltrate them. You destroyed Alpha from the inside. You helped us, Negan. We won, because of you.

“So we gave you your freedom. You could have left us, you could have struck out on your own, but you didn’t. We let you stay in one of the vacant houses. But you never came out of your house. For weeks, you were a hermit, staying alone in there. It wasn’t like you and we were concerned. We thought you might have been depressed.

“So Rick and Judith started visiting you. They wanted to give you some company, to cheer you up. They’d bring over food and games and they’d stay with you for hours. Everyday.

“Over time, you began to come out of your shell. You and Rick got close. Judith too. But you and Rick, you two started spending more time together. You became nearly inseparable.

“After a while, you moved in with Rick and Judith. You became part of their family. And about two years ago, Negan, you and Rick got married,” Michonne finished with an upturned smile. “You guys got married.”

She stopped speaking, carefully scanning Negan’s expression for any kind of recollection of what she’d just shared, leaning forward in the chair. “Negan? Do you remember any of that?”

“Goddamn…,” Negan whispered in awe and wonderment, seemingly processing the vast implications of what he’d heard. He looked at Michonne, her stone-tight jaw and scrunched brow, awaiting his answer. “You know, if you’re going to keep fucking with me, you should’ve at least made the story believable instead of pulling all that bizarro shit outta your ass. Or did Rick come up with that bloated load of crap? I’ll give you props on creativity, though. Never in a million years would I have-“

Michonne faltered, cupping her face in her hands. “Negan,” she sighed, “it’s not a story. Why would we lie to you? Why would we make it all up? What possible reason would we have to do that?”

“I don’t know!” Negan spat, voice raising. “Because you’re bored and got nothing better to do? Because this is all so goddamn entertaining for you? Yeah, I bet you all decided to get together and plan this big, glorious prank on me, because I’m stuck in a cell and don’t know fuckall, and you think you can do whatever you want to me for shits and giggles. And if by chance I start to believe any of this heaping turd pile you’re trying to ram down my throat, you’ll all jump out and yell ‘Gotcha!’ so I can look like a giant fucking idiot while everyone laughs their asses off.

“But I’ll never fall for it so you can drop the act. But hey, good job on the attention to detail,” Negan ranted on, “I must say I’m impressed. The new hair-do’s on everyone – and even the crying kid was a nice touch, although kinda random. So who’s she supposed to be? And how’d you rope some poor little kid into this shitshow anyway?”

“Negan-,“ Michonne warned with a pained look, “that was Judith. She – she’s your stepdaughter.”

“Ohh, right,” Negan scoffed, “’cause I’m ‘married’ to Rick, am I? I guess that explains that thing over there,” he said, nodding towards the wedding ring on the side table. “Again, all the little details. Bravo.” He shook his head with a rancorous sneer. “Look, I know it’s Rick putting you all up to this. It’s not enough for him that he slit my throat, not enough that I gotta rot in some cell. He’s gotta fuck with me any way he can and you’re all too happy to play along.”

“Rick-…,” Michonne rasped, “Rick is absolutely devastated by all of this…”

“By the way,” Negan chided, “you could’ve told me I was married to a dyslexic polar bear and I’d believe that before I’d ever believe that I married _Rick the Prick_. I mean, come the fuck on.”

Michonne sat grim-faced, her mouth pursed and speechless as she stared at the ring lying idle on the table. She stood abruptly, pushing the chair backwards, the wooden legs scraping harshly against the linoleum flooring. Darting forward, she palmed the ring in her hand before turning to leave the room.

“Hey, you gonna bring that back to Rick?” Negan queried as Michonne reached for the door. “When you give it to him, tell him he can go cram it all the way up his shithole until he chokes on the fucking thing.”

She was already gone before Negan finished his instructions, but he was sure she got the gist.

* * *

Days passed as he laid in the infirmary bed. The medical staff came to check on him regularly, to deliver meals, to provide pain medicine and to replace his bandages as needed. They always remained tight-lipped when it came to Negan’s probing questions.

“C’mon doc, you’re not still going along with Rick the Prick’s little charade, right? You can tell me who it was that conked me over the noggin’. It was Rick, wasn’t it? Just say it.”

They would look at him like startled deer, faltering for an answer, then hurriedly excuse themselves to work on something else.

Slowly, Negan found himself able to sit up, and then he was able to stand up without excruciating pain. Eventually, he was padding around the room on his own, flipping open the window shade, peering through the glass out into a world he was not a part of. At first, he thought the sights looked “off”, kind of archaic, but brushed it off.

He was able to saunter into the small, connected bathroom and look into the mirror that hung above the sink. He stared close at his reflection, leaning forward, mere inches from himself. He supposed he looked a tad older – more gray, deeper lines – but it only meant that his time in the prison had taken a toll, the strain of incarceration aging him prematurely in a few short months. He even had a shorter haircut, which disturbed and enraged him, for how dare they mess with his hair while he was knocked out cold?

Then one day, Rick appeared in the doorway.

Negan looked up from the bed, immediately bristling at the sight of Rick. This man who Negan was certain had inflicted his head injury, this man who was having his people fabricate an entire universe of lies, had the gall to show up here.

For moments, Rick only stood by the threshold, looking at Negan as if through an invisible barrier. “Hey,” he voiced, his first words to Negan since his injury, “um, how are you feeling?” He took a tentative step into the room, slinking ever closer to the bedside but keeping careful distance.

“Well, well, if it isn’t ‘hubby dearest’. So what brings you by, prick? Are you taking me back to the cell now? Wait ‘til I fall asleep so you can give me another concussion and then tell me I’m screwing the Queen of England?”

Rick seemed sharply taken aback by Negan’s sarcasm, visibly flinching and breaking eye contact as if he were slapped in the face. He recovered after a few beats, decidedly ignoring the shots fired.

“The doctor told me it’s okay if you left the infirmary for a short period,” Rick stated. “I was thinking I could show you around the community, and you could see for yourself all the changes that’s been made. And maybe, - maybe you’ll remember some of it…”

Jesus, Rick was still holding fast to his sick mind games, Negan thought, still trying to convince him that years had literally elapsed overnight. He was partially curious to see just how far Rick was willing to take it.

“You’re going to bring me out there?” Negan asked, “Parade me all around the fine people of Alexandria?”

Rick’s adam apple bobbed along the column of his throat. “I just think it would help if you saw for yourself…”

Negan tilted his head as he pondered the proposal, his mind churning with possibilities. “Alright, Rick,” he drawled coolly. “Let’s go.”

Together, they exited the room, Rick leading the way through the infirmary. Negan couldn’t believe it as he followed behind a defenseless Rick. It was only the two of them there – Rick hadn’t brought any backup with him, and not a single weapon on his person.

Here was his opportunity, clear as a bell. Negan’s mind pooled with thoughts of violence, all the ways he had envisioned killing Rick during the time he sat imprisoned. He could attack Rick right here and now with his own deadly hands, slam Rick to the floor and strangle the breath from him, watch those shocked blue eyes wash over in crimson, revel as his enemy turned limp and lifeless beneath his grip.

With a clenched jaw, Negan closed his hand, knuckles whitening, examining the back of Rick’s head to target his first blow. He couldn’t believe Rick was being this unguarded, so strangely trusting. It was just plain foolish, so unlike Rick.

Was this a trick? A test? Negan dug his nails into the palm of his tightened fist, willing himself to strike.

But suddenly they were outdoors, the sunlight bright and streaming on Negan’s face as he blinked back the glare.

“C’mon,” Rick said lightly, looking over his shoulder, encouraging Negan to follow.

The moment for bloodshed had passed. Outside, people milled about the scene - working, chatting and going about their day. He couldn’t kill Rick in front of so many witnesses.

They walked along the path, passing by large structures, the expanded garden, the windmill, the schoolhouse, the graveyard. Rick would frequently glance at Negan with a nervous eye, seemingly to gauge Negan’s reaction to everything.

Alexandria looked different, Negan had to internally admit. New buildings, more land. Horses and chickens. Like a throwback to a semi-colonial era.

And the townspeople didn’t seem alarmed by Negan’s presence outside the jail. They weren’t gasping and pointing at a wild beast that had broken out of its cage. It must be all part of the show, Negan figured. Rick had instructed them well.

“And this proves what, exactly?” Negan huffed when they stopped in front of the greenhouse.

“Negan, we’ve been slowly developing over the last six years,” Rick stated, “all this progress couldn’t have happened overnight.”

“So you’ve all been very busy beavers,” Negan said, dismissive in tone. “But it’s not fucking proof of anything. You could’ve brought in help from the other communities to build all this shit. Could’ve been done real fast, a couple of months.”

Just then a random passerby stopped in front of them. “Hey, Negan. Rick,” the man greeted as if he knew them. “Negan, glad to see you’re out and about. You had us worried after that nasty fall. Are you doing okay?”

A cold, withering glower was Negan’s response to the stranger, whose friendly smile soon melted off his face.

“Really, Rick?” Negan snapped, “Is everyone in this goddamn place in on this prank? You’ll really stop at nothing to keep fucking with me. Are your people just props, Rick? This all a big fucking fake movie set with cardboard cut-outs and shitty hollow buildings? You really think I’ll believe that I woke up six years in the fucking future and that I somehow married _the_ _biggest prickhole I ever met_? This is just a great barrel of laughs for you, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a real knee-slapper alright, you sad, sorry stack of shit!”

At this vociferous tirade, all pedestrians in the vicinity stopped and stared, eyes gawking and mouths gaping like fish. Rick looked absolutely mortified, his skin bleaching pale, a quivering leaf wilting under the heated blaze of Negan’s verbal assault. The stranger had quietly scurried away amid Negan’s explosive raging.

“I’ve had enough of this shit,” Negan seethed, turning to walk away, wishing for a bottle of pain pills. His head wound stung deep under the bandage patch and his nerves were frayed like exposed electrical wire.

“Wait!” Rick called out. He reached a hand towards Negan’s shoulder, but pulled back abruptly like he’d be singed by fire. “There’s somewhere else I want you to see. _Please_ , Negan. It’s….it’s important.”

For some reason, something in Rick’s voice made Negan stop and reluctantly turn around. Maybe it was the piteous, plaintive timbre that pulled at him, like a lost dog crying in the rain. Maybe it was sheer morbid curiosity of what else Rick could possibly have up his sleeve.

Rick nodded and walked forward, stopping to glance at Negan in a silent plead to follow. With a groaning sigh, Negan did so against his better judgement.

They came to a row of houses, climbed up the porch steps of one such home. The wood creaked under their weight as Rick opened the door. Negan was struck by familiarity when he stepped through the entrance.

This was Rick’s house.

Negan brimmed with befuddlement as to why Rick would bring them here, into his own home, alone with no audience.

Again, Negan’s thoughts turned dark. Here was another chance to kill Rick.

Rick moved further into the house with Negan trailing close, a prone lamb naively leading a wolf into its private shelter. They wandered aimlessly it seemed, from room to room, with no clear purpose of this visit.

They entered the kitchen. Negan spied the various items sitting atop the counter – a waffle iron, cookie jars, cutting boards – before his eyes stopped on a block of knives. He imagined himself grabbing one, lunging and impaling the wide blade between Rick’s rib bones. Wrench the knife out amid dry gasps and slash Rick’s throat in a dizzy fit of vengeance. Soak himself in the molten torrent of blood until Rick’s placid body lay trickling at Negan’s feet.

“Do you…remember any of this?” Rick spoke, breaking Negan out of his morbid musings.

Negan positioned himself closer to the knives, well within an outstretched arm.

“Sure do,” was his reply. “Been here once. Cooked spaghetti with dear ‘ole Carl. Boy, that sure was some good times,” Negan taunted with a wry grin, noting how Rick recoiled at the mention of his dead son’s name. The man sank where he stood, so fragile like a simple gust would bowl him over. Rick looked so hollow, so coiled in suffering, and for a fleeting moment Negan felt a stab of remorse.

He couldn’t understand it, why Rick mimicked a glass figurine about to shatter. It almost reminded Negan of their first meeting - Rick utterly broken, the tears of anguish he had shed. But this seemed a different kind of brokenness. It tugged Negan on an innate level, pinched him with the slightest of doubt. And it didn’t seem to have anything to do with Carl.

Negan had to remind himself - it was only an act, and a damn good one.

And then Rick bolted from the kitchen in dramatic fashion, leaving Negan mystified and listening to the sound of fading footfalls. He couldn’t understand it, why Rick was doing this, why Rick was expending so much time and effort on this joke - and it was a _joke_ , most certainly.

Behind the space Rick had vacated was the refrigerator. Upon its double doors, a series of child’s crayon drawings hung from small magnets shaped like fruit. Negan glimpsed them briefly – colorful scenes of rainbows, horses and trees. Puffy happy clouds and birds in flight. Squiggly-lined portrayals of people as interpreted by a child’s hand.

He recalled Rick’s daughter - the bright, bouncy-haired toddler Negan had once joyfully plucked from her crib, no more than the age of three at the time – far too young to produce the quality of these drawings. They were yet another damning lie, drawn by an older child or maybe even an adult, and planted here for Negan’s eyes.

These were sick, twisted games Rick was playing.

Negan glanced back at the knives sheathed in their wooden block, but the luster of murder had dulled. This was all so sad and pathetic. Rick had a major screw loose and Negan almost pitied him.

Then he remembered Lucille. His Lucille was likely somewhere around here, sitting isolated and lonely, longing for Negan to retrieve her. He wanted to tear the place apart to search for her, but he couldn’t right now, not while Rick was still roaming somewhere in the house.

He would have to come back another time. Right now he just wanted to get back to the infirmary and pop some pain pills. He didn’t even bother to hunt Rick down. Negan was done with the insanity, done with everything.

* * *

Hours later, he had another visitor. A polite knock on his door revealed Father Gabriel, calm and reserved, dressed in his usual priestly attire.

“So, Gabey, are you going to shovel the same horseshit in my face like everyone else around here? I’m expecting better from a man of the good book. After all, isn’t that one of those ten commandments? Thou shalt not fuck with people?”

“I came to see how you were doing,” Gabriel said. “I heard you caused quite a stir today. People are…concerned.”

“The only thing they should be concerned about is that they have a leader who’s getting his rocks off from mind-fucking me and roping everyone else into his dysfunctional looney tunes shit show. Yeah, real stellar as fuck leadership quality right there.”

Gabriel did not react or argue, and only clasped his hands in front of himself, bowed his head briefly. “I will continue to pray for your recovery, Negan. And if I may add a word of advice. Sometimes there are signs pointing to things unknown to us, things that are beyond our reason or perception. Many times, we overlook them, so I implore you, Negan, please do not overlook the signs.”

“Goddammit, Gabe, what in the holy fucking hell?”

“I must be going. See you again soon,” Gabriel finished, dipping out of the room.

Negan decided he’d had enough. He was convinced that all of Alexandria was collaborating to drive him mad, to chip away at his sanity until they had to install padded walls in the jail cell. Well, Negan wasn’t going to oblige them. As soon as he was healed enough to travel, he would leave for good.

Over the next days, he prepared. He collected extra food and medicine the staff brought him, stashed them in a knapsack he kept hidden under the bed. Then, when no one was looking, he planned to walk through the gates, forever leaving this place.

He would find his way back to Sanctuary, the only real home he’d known since the world went to hell. Negan wondered who was left there, if his people were clamoring for his return, who was in charge in his absence. He would find out soon enough, but one thing he knew for sure, even if Sanctuary had been razed to the ground, he would _never_ return to Alexandria.


	2. Chapter 2

Negan was ready. He stood at the window, the sun filtering through the blinds, casting bars of shadow across his face and chest. His knapsack was filled with enough food and water to last him the journey back to Sanctuary.

He would leave late tonight when everyone was asleep. But first he’d find Lucille. He’d break into Rick’s house, find her and then leave straight away. He wouldn’t even bother killing Rick. He just wanted to be out of there, be rid of this place like a bad rash, leave Rick and his clan of sycophants to themselves.

Tonight couldn’t come fast enough. He just needed to get through the day, and then he’d be gone.

A noise distracted Negan’s thoughts, light footsteps tapping towards his room and stopping at the doorway. Negan turned around, expecting the doctor, or perhaps even Rick. But it was neither.

A young girl stood there, with long brownish hair and large round eyes, peering up at Negan from under an adult’s wide-brimmed hat. It was the same mystery girl he saw when he first woke up in the infirmary, the one Michonne had absurdly claimed was his ‘stepdaughter.’ 

“Hi,” she spoke from the doorway, simple and unassuming. She remained standing there, reminiscent of the way Rick had, almost afraid to enter.

“Hey there,” Negan replied, eyeing her suspiciously. “I’m Negan. What’s your name?”

For a second, the girl looked taken aback by the question. “Judith,” she answered.

Negan sighed. “Did Rick send you?”

She shook her head. “Daddy doesn’t know I’m here. He’d be mad if he found out. He said you wouldn’t remember who I was, but that it’s not your fault.” She stepped forward slowly. “I wanted to see you.”

Negan suddenly felt sorry for this child, being recruited to put on a show like a cute little puppet, just so Rick could get his kicks from messing with Negan.

She moved further into the room, sat down on the edge of the bed, looking first to Negan to check if it was okay. Negan pulled up a chair to sit in front of her. “Look, you can drop the act now. I know Rick’s kid is only about three years old. I don’t think it’s cool that he’s using you pull his bullshit pranks. Kid your age should be out playing with friends or going to school or something.”

“I am in school,” she responded, “they let us out during lunch time.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Daddy said he couldn’t get you to remember, even when he showed you around our house. You wouldn’t believe him. So I thought I could try.” The girl reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper folded into a small square. She unfolded it, slowly and gently like an intricate origami piece, the paper crinkling as she smoothed it out flat.

She held it out for Negan’s eyes. It was a kid’s drawing, same as the ones that adorned Rick’s refrigerator. There was a house, a tree, a sun in the sky. Grass and flowers on the ground. And in the center were three smiling people standing side by side – a female child wearing a hat, a man, and a taller man. It wasn’t rocket science to see where this was going.

“That’s me, and Daddy, and you,” she said, pointing to each figure composed of crayon, as simple and matter-of-fact as only a child could explain.

Her big, expectant eyes sought a reaction, but Negan could only shift awkwardly in the chair. “Ah, jeez…,” he breathed. “Is this supposed to be proof that we’re all one big, happy family? You’re a natural Picasso, kid, if you drew this. But proof, this ain’t.”

She slumped, dropping her eyes to her lap, body language smacking of disappointment. For some reason it made Negan feel a guilty twinge, even though he knew it was just a performance.

“I drew it a long time ago,” the girl spoke in a delicate lilt, “from before you came to live with us. You were living in that other house, but you never came out because you were too sad. So Daddy and I came to visit you until you were happy again.”

It was disconcerting, this child telling him things that never happened, could never have happened, but with such innocence and assuming honesty. Negan rubbed a hand over his face. The rough scratch of his beard against his palm sounded abnormally loud.

He looked at her with a tilted gaze, hands clasped together, wringing them slightly.

“And what was I so sad about?”

Negan awaited her reply, willing her to go off-script and stumble with words. The whole web of lies would unravel if he could catch her without an answer. Rick could not have coached her on every small detail of this intricate farce.

“Lucille.”

He blinked, hesitating a beat. “What?”

“Your bat,” she clarified.

“Wait, what do you know about Lucille? Did Rick tell you?”

“You told me.”

Of course Rick had to have told her. It peeved Negan to think that Rick was involving Lucille in this pathetic, sham narrative. It was insulting and disrespectful. What else had Rick trained this girl to say?

“You know, I’m actually looking for Lucille,” Negan proclaimed. “But I think Rick’s got her mothballed in a moldy closet somewhere in his house and he won’t let me have her back, which yeah, I guess that does make me kinda sad.”

“She’s not in the house.”

Negan quirked a brow. “So you know where she is?”

She nodded - a slow, morose nod. “I can show you.”

It was just another trick, Negan knew, another way to screw with his head.

“I can take you to her,” she offered again, sliding off the bed, her shoes clapping against the tile, “if you want.”

Negan turned his head dismissively, almost scoffed aloud. The whole thing was ridiculous. He shouldn’t be falling for any of this, but there was a part of him that was curious, that itched with intrigue. The girl’s wide, innocent eyes implored him further.

It was no wonder why Rick had cast her for this part. She was a convincing little actress.

But what would it hurt to humor her, Negan thought, on the off-chance that she actually knew anything. Perhaps Rick had let slip the real whereabouts of Lucille’s location to her.

“Alright, kiddo. Lead the way.”

* * *

They marched through town, the girl a few steps ahead as she set a quick pace. “Come on,” she cajoled when Negan seemed to lag behind. He was struck by how much she reminded him of Rick. Almost eerie and unsettlingly so.

As the mini tour guide led them past much of the same buildings and landmarks, Negan wondered just where the hell this wild goose chase was headed. Halfway through, he was starting to think maybe this was just a big, fat waste of time, each step placing him farther in doubt.

Then they came upon the graveyard, and a wary Negan followed her in. She led them through the short grass, between the plots of recently turned earth. It was an ominous scene, quiet and still as the dead that lay beneath their feet. Markers of stone, personal artifacts or bouquets of wildflowers designated each grave, nameless and without inscription.

As they ventured in further, Negan pondered if she was taking them through a shortcut, because surely, this couldn’t be their destination.

He kept following until they were at the very back of the graveyard, against the steel outer perimeter of Alexandria, where the soil remained cool under the shade of trees. The girl stopped, tilted her head up to look at Negan, who towered above her. She looked down at the ground, and Negan followed her gaze.

He looked back at her in confusion. “What are we looking at?”

The girl knelt down on the ground next to a stone marker, dirt smudging the denim on her knees. “She’s here,” she said. “This is where we buried her.”

Negan nearly flinched, so jarring were those words. He leaned in closer as if he’d misheard her. Did she mean Lucille?

“What? Buried her? We’re still talking about a bat, right?” was the only thing he could muster. Such a thing didn’t make sense.

She tipped her face up at him and nodded. “She was broken. When you went to fight the Whisperers, she broke during the fight. That’s why we thought you were sad. We thought that maybe…, maybe it was like she died.”

She must have noticed the disturbed look on his face, because she quickly continued on. “But then it was okay. You got better after we buried her.”

This was going too far. Too uncomfortable and bizarre, the suggestion that Lucille was in the ground, in this graveyard with all these dead people. It was absurd, even just the premise of it. Negan wouldn’t have buried Lucille, even if she was broken. He would have kept her. He would have kept her forever.

“Look, kid,” Negan began, shaking his head. “Listen, this is getting creepy. I think it’s time for you to run along. Go do some normal kid shit, alright?”

“You didn’t want to bury her at first,” she resumed. “But I told you that maybe you should, because…even though it’s a bat, it’s like a person you loved was living inside of it.” She touched the brim of her hat, tipping it upwards. “It’s like my hat. Carl gave it to me before he died. When I wear it, I feel like he’s here with me. If something ever happened to it, it would be like it happened to Carl too. So I thought…maybe it’s the same way with your bat – when it broke, you felt like your wife died again.”

A shiver ran through Negan as he stood frozen, the ground feeling like it would pull him under. He attempted to speak but nothing came out. A blockage formed in his throat he could neither cough up nor swallow down. His eyes fell on the girl’s hat, now realizing why it seemed familiar. He’d seen it before. It _was_ Carl’s hat. Carl had worn it like it was a permanent fixture on his head, and now this young girl wore it the same way.

After a prolonged, strained silence, Negan managed to thaw his voice. “My wife? How-, how did you know about her?”

“You told me about her. You talked about her a lot.” At his uneasy expression, she gestured down at the makeshift gravestone. “We made this together,” she said, “you helped me paint it.”

Negan looked at the stone more closely. It was oval-shaped, naturally smooth, about the size of a football. A single flower was painted upon its surface – simple white petals and green leaves, the colored pigments partially faded around the edges.

“It’s a white rose,” she explained, “because it was her favorite flower.”

Negan felt the air leave his lungs, his chest constricted of all air from flowing. How she knew something so specific, he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Like she had reached in and plucked out an obscure fact that resided in his mind, and his mind alone.

“Wait, what…how did you know that?

“You told me.”

That was impossible. Negan never told anyone.

The girl craned up at his stunned, startled face.

“You told me that you only found out by accident what her favorite flower was,” she recounted. “It was on your first date with her. On your way to pick her up, you stopped by the flower shop, on the corner of Canary Street. You were going to buy red roses but the shop ran out of them. So you bought white roses instead.

“And when you gave them to her she was so surprised. She couldn’t believe how you knew she loved white roses and not red. That’s how she knew you were special. Because all the men she dated before always got her red roses.

“You said it was the reason you got a second date when no other men could. And then you eventually married her. All because that flower shop ran out of red roses that day.” She ended by adding, “You said you were the luckiest son of a bitch alive.”

This girl, whom Negan could swear he’d never met before, was telling him something she couldn’t possibly have known, couldn’t possibly have guessed, but every word of it was true, every detail frightfully accurate right down to the name of the street. No one knew this story outside of him and Lucille, not any other soul, living or dead, or so he thought.

There could only be one explanation for this, one explanation that made any sense.

He had told the girl this story.

“So we painted a white rose for her,” Judith said, “and we stood here and said good-bye. It was just you, Daddy and me.” She looked away, bowing her head, her hat a shield from his gaze. “But you don’t remember any of it..,” her small voice trailed.

Negan closed his eyes, forced in a breath and exhaled out slow. He lowered himself to the ground, kneeling down beside her, a knee in the dirt as he peered into her face. “I don’t remember it,” he confirmed regretfully, “but…I wish I did.”

Her eyes glistened, wet along the lower rims. “Are you still going to leave?”

“What?”

“I saw a bag under your bed,” she revealed.

“Oh. I, um,…I, I don’t know…”

“You shouldn’t leave. We don’t want you to.”

Again, Negan couldn’t speak. He felt drowned, a tin can compressed under the weight of an ocean, tossed helpless by the pushing and pulling of the waves.

“Daddy misses you,” Judith said then. “He says when your memories come back to you, you’ll come back to us, but until then we need to be strong. But he cries when he thinks I’m not looking. I cry too.” She wavered, brushing a hand over her eyes to cease them from pooling. Smattered tears darkened her lashes.

“Hey,” Negan spoke softly, “it’ll be okay,” he said, for the lack of something better to say. “Things will be okay, angel.”

They were motionless for what seemed like forever, kneeling by the grave, all surroundings falling mute like a silent film. There was the cool touch of a breeze and the strong scent of earth, colors visibly saturating in the sun.

A sudden ringing noise disturbed the calm, off in the distance. The clanging bells of the schoolhouse.

“I have to go,” Judith informed, “back to my class. I’ll be in trouble if I’m late.” She stood. Pieces of grass and dirt clung to her clothes which she didn’t bother to brush off.

Negan rose to his feet as well, the action taking more effort than anticipated. “Oh, right,…sure thing,” he stammered. “Hey, sharp kid like you probably teach the instructor a thing or two, huh?” His light comment fell flat as she turned to leave. “Hey, uh, Judith,” he called, watching as she paused at the sound of her name, looking back. “Thanks for bringing me here. I’ll uh, see you around, alright?”

She nodded slightly as acknowledgement before heading off towards the school.

Negan was left standing in the graveyard, surrounded by the silent dead. The magnitude of his newly attained awareness was still sinking in, beating its way into his consciousness. The implications of what he’d been made to realize was mind-numbing.

That girl was Judith at nine years old. That little toddler was no more.

Six years had passed him by without a single recollection.

It was all true.

He stared at the back of his hands, scrutinizing with new eyes - the age in them, the changes that he hadn’t cared – nor wanted - to notice before. And then he saw as clear as day, the prominent lighter shade of skin at the base of his ring finger, where the wedding band had been. A ring tan – stark and contrasting - one that could only have been acquired over long-term wear.

All the puzzle pieces latched into place, the dots connecting to compose a truth he didn’t believe could be possible. But it was.

He was a father, to Judith.

And he was married, to Rick.

* * *

Negan wandered in a daze. It was as if a veil had been lifted except everything became muddy and unclear. Like a blind man gifted with sight but the new visions were far too overwhelming to process. Directionless, he roamed the well-worn pathways of Alexandria, drifting through a foreign land.

If he had been freed for years, he would have seen Alexandria expand and grow. He would have seen these buildings built from the ground up. He would have even helped with their construction. He would be familiar with the faces of the current townsfolk, the men and women ambling about, the pre-schoolers playing and yelling on the grass turf. He’d know them by name and where they came from.

He would know something. _Anything._

But he didn’t.

Negan couldn’t remember, no matter how hard he tried to reach the recessed memories that lay locked in his own impervious psyche. He was incomplete, a book with entire chapters ripped out, lost in its storyline with no knowledge of how to stitch back the pages.

His wanderings led him to a large, central building. He followed the walkway, passing along the original brick facades, coming to a descending stairway leading to a basement. He stepped closer, staring down the entrance. Nearby, on the side of the building, was a low window, secured by metal bars instead of glass panes.

This he recognized. It was his jail.

Negan peered through the window, the interior dark and empty. He needed to see it.

Descending down the short flight of steps, he nudged open the door. The hinges made a slow, rusty groan as it gave way. Inside, he faced the metal barriers of his former residence.

It was eerie, standing there on the opposite side of the bars. It was cold, dark, the smell musty like an old storage room. The iron door creaked open as he touched it, unlocked. Negan entered the cell, a barren, empty space. There was nothing left - the cot gone, all signs of occupancy gone. The entire cell was covered in a layer of dirt and dust, unkempt through obvious years of vacancy.

The light of the window flared bright in contrast with the dingy, cinderblock walls. In his mind, it was only days ago he had gazed out this very window, watching the world pass him by.

But apparently now, he was part of the world again.

* * *

A house stood in front of him – Rick’s house – and it took more than a moment for Negan to will his legs to move up the steps to the entrance. He knew no one was home. Rick wouldn’t be here at this time of day and Judith was still at school. The doorknob turned easily with no restrictions. People didn’t lock their doors around here.

Stepping through the threshold - something he would have done countless times if he indeed lived here - it should have been a welcoming, familiar sight. But it wasn’t. He felt like a stranger encroaching on the privacy of another’s property without invitation.

But he _did_ live here, didn’t he? It’s why Rick had brought him here the other day - so he could remember, so the warm comforts of home would trigger his memories. But as he wandered through, observing the paint on the walls, the furniture, the homey decor, nothing was triggering. There was no ‘Aha’ moment of clarity, no sudden spark of recognition.

Negan moved on to the kitchen. Did he make breakfast in the mornings? Did they all sit and eat at the table, engaged in inane chit-chat about whatever it is that a family would talk about?

Family. Negan couldn’t even wrap his mind around the concept as it pertained to himself. His prospects of having a family ended when Lucille died along with the rest of the world. Negan had accepted that fact, swallowed it bitter and whole.

He hung his head over the dining table, trying to guess which place setting was his. His eyes traced the details of the wood grain on the table’s surface until they became a blurry haze. Negan tried to force the memories to materialize, to will his brain to repair whatever damage was done and retrieve even just a single memory from the last six years.

But he couldn’t.

He swallowed back a lump. There was one other place he could think of to try, as he moved towards the stairs that led to the second level.

His steps sounded heavy as he made his way up, anticipation stirring in his gut. At the top, the master bedroom greeted him with its door wide open, but as he entered, he wasn’t struck by a sense of familiarity. Again, he was out of place and invading someone else’s private chambers.

But this was where he slept at night and this was where he and Rick…

A tight, twisty feeling knotted in his stomach as he thought about himself and Rick in the bed, nested under the sheets, doing the expected thing that married people do. It was too surreal a thought, so incredible the notion of it was – that he and Rick were lovers and not enemies, that a series of events had turned them so dramatically that their relationship was the complete inverse of what it once was. But even as he knew it was true, believed it was real, he couldn’t _feel_ it was real. He couldn’t feel it until he remembered.

The covers lay in a heap on the bed, and this small detail nagged at Negan’s mind. He didn’t like a messy bed and always laid the covers flat. Obviously, Rick didn’t mind as much. At the urge to fix them, Negan gathered up the covers, soft and plush in his arms, but then stopped. He wondered if this was something he did every day, or if he no longer cared and let the bed remain untidy. Or did he pester Rick to make the bed instead, or did they take turns?

Not knowing this one trivial facet of their life was somehow causing Negan an unreasonable amount of grief. He let the covers drop and instead, slowly crawled onto the bed and laid down, not even sure if he was on “his” side or not. Breathing in the sheets, he laid there with his face pressed against the pillow, trying to extract a feeling from it all, any inkling of a familiar impression, anything at all.

Negan didn’t know how much time passed as he only laid there, imagining but not remembering. The enormity of what had been taken from him was all consuming. He’d waken up to an entirely different existence and it was right here, right under this roof and within these walls, things he never thought was attainable for him, but was now so detached and removed from it all. 

In his mind, a second life, all wiped clear.

He eventually sat up and climbed off the bed. Scooping up the covers, he spread them out flat on the mattress. An inane gesture, making the bed. He didn’t even know what the point of it was, but it was just something he had always done.

The wood of the staircase creaked on every step as he descended down to the main floor. As he reached the bottom, he heard the front door swing open and someone entering. Negan almost froze like he was an intruder getting caught red-handed.

Glancing across the living room, he met eyes with Rick – who was lingering by the doorway with an openly stunned expression. For prolonged moments they each stood where they were, caught off guard, not budging their sights off the other man.

Finally, one of them had to speak.

“Hey,” Rick voiced low and soft.

“Hey,” Negan responded, “I uh- just stopped by to, um,” he started, thinking he should be explaining his presence as if this wasn’t his own home. “I thought that maybe, I could uh…”

“It’s okay,” Rick said quickly, taking a few steps forward, keeping a distance as if not to spook a wild animal. “It’s fine that you’re here. Are…are you feeling better?”

Negan stayed standing by the staircase, his hand gripping onto the end of the bannister like it was a life raft keeping him afloat. His gaze drifted around the room until he shook his head, slowly. “I don’t know what I feel right now, Rick.”

“Do you…remember anything?” The hopeful inflection in Rick’s question and the glimmer in his eyes were hard to miss.

“No.”

It was the very simplest answer of truth, yet it came out heavy and rough, discouraging to his own ears. He saw as Rick deflated, matching him in disappointment.

“I talked to Judith today,” Negan stated, and at this Rick appeared surprised and alarmed. “She came to the infirmary. Don’t be mad at her. It was good that she did.”

“How so?”

“Well, she made me into a believer, Rick. All that crazy ass shit everyone’s been trying to tell me, well, turns out it really is true. Been walking around all day with my mind blown six ways from Sunday. I’m still trying to scrape the pieces of my brain off the walls.”

“Wait, so you…believe everything now?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do…but…”

“But what?”

“But, I just can’t feel it. If it’s really been this long, then I should at least…feel something, right? Even though I don’t remember anything?”

Rick seemed at a loss. “I, I don’t know how it works. It might come to you later, or, or-“

“Or never?” Negan interrupted, “’cause I’ve been trying, I really have. It’s why I came here,…I thought that maybe something would click. But there’s nothing. It’s like that part of my brain’s been scooped out with a melon baller and flushed down the shitter.”

“But, but at least you’re trying,” Rick said, hopeful. “That’s good. It’s progress.”

“I don’t know, Rick. Holy shit – I mean, six friggin’ years. That’s a lot to forget, isn’t it? What if all that’s dead and gone and there’s no getting it back? What if I can’t be that guy you knew?” It felt like the floor was wobbling under his feet, that it would collapse, pulling him down right through it if it weren’t for his vice-tight grip on the bannister.

“Hey…hey,” Rick rushed forward a few steps as if to catch Negan’s fall before halting in his tracks. “You don’t have to be,” he stated. “You don’t have to remember. It doesn’t need to be exactly as before. We can start all over. We can make new memories for you - better ones, even. You’re not alone in this. We can make it work. All you have to do is give it a chance. That is…if, if you want to…”

Negan was torn as they both stood fidgeting, unsure of what came next. It was all right there, a whole new life, prepackaged and tied in a neat, shining bow – a home, marriage, fatherhood – a family he never thought was in the cards for him. All he had to do was to simply say - yes, he wanted it.

It should be what he wanted. But the dissonance between the life he knew and this new one seemed too far to bridge. Negan didn’t know if he could fall into the role of domesticity, adoring husband and doting parent, when only days ago he was dreaming about murdering the man in front of him. It wasn’t a switch he could flip so easily. 

“I know you don’t feel the same way about me anymore,” Rick said, his voice bleeding like an open wound. “I understand. If we can’t go back to what we were, if we’re not together…it’s fine. You can still be a part of our lives. I -…Judith…we want you in our lives.” His eyes watered, stung with emotion. “Stay here with us. You can stay in the extra bedroom. We can still be a family, or at least, something close to it.”

In a quick motion, Rick brushed a tear away with the cuff of his sleeve but in that second, Negan caught the silvery glint of the wedding ring on Rick’s hand. Negan felt a guilty clench as he recalled tossing aside his own ring as a fake prop. And not only that, he had later berated Rick in public, spitting venom in his face when Rick was only attempting to show Negan the truth. He’d been so wrong and a downright ass during this whole ordeal.

“But you’d still want me back after I’ve been a complete dickwad?” Negan asked. “I haven’t exactly been Husband-of-the-Year material lately. Am I really worth keeping around?”

Rick breathed out a small laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling at Negan’s apparent insecurity. “Yes,” Rick affirmed, “yes, of course. You’re the best husband I could ever ask for.”

It wasn’t sarcasm or a joke. There wasn’t a punchline coming. It wasn’t an act. But still, the doubt stamped on Negan’s face must have been plain to see.

“You’re always the life of the party when we have guests over,” Rick started. “You make waffles on the weekends that are so good, people are always dropping by ‘just to say hi’ hoping to join us. You help Judith with her math homework even though you hate math. You taught her how to skip rocks in the lake, how to build bottle rockets and how to say ‘shit’ in five languages. You don’t read bedtime stories, but you’ve been retelling her the entire Godfather trilogy, and she’s riveted. On laundry days, you still pick up my dirty clothes off the floor even though you’ve told me countless times to use the hamper. You make me see things in a different perspective I would never have seen on my own. You always have a way of talking me out of a bad mood. Not a day goes by where you don’t make me smile. And…and so many other things that would take me a lifetime to say them all.”

Negan hung on to every word, seeing shades of himself in Rick’s depiction. Even though it seemed like it _could_ be true, that it could be him in that rather charming portrayal, having no recollection of it was distressing.

“Sounds like a pretty cool cat,” Negan remarked, “like someone I could hang with,” he joked, yet the words came off heavier than intended. “But is that still me, Rick? Shit, I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore or what the hell I’m supposed to be.”

“You don’t have to be anything,” Rick insisted. “Just be you. No matter what you remember or don’t remember, you are always _you_.” Through the glaze of tears, Rick smiled. “It’s what I love about you.”

“Just-, could you tell me just one thing?” Negan implored. “There’s something that’s really bothering me.”

Rick swallowed. “Yeah?”

“Who makes the bed? Is it you or me?”

Rick closed his eyes, took in a needed breath. “You do,” he grinned, looking back at Negan. “It’s always been you.”

An insignificant thing, but it was a tiny anchor of knowledge in a vast ocean of the unknown in Negan’s mind. Negan nodded, as if he had known all along.

It was a start.

* * *

It wasn’t easy, early on, getting used to routines already established, adjusting to the idiosyncrasies of home life.

The second drawer in the kitchen would stick, and he’d have to rattle it to get it open. Am uneven floorboard in the hallway created a tripping hazard. He made a mental note to fix those things, eventually.

Judith didn’t like broccoli. She’ll try to fake a stomach ache to get out of eating them. Rick lit up like a furnace at the slightest hint of a chili pepper. They both liked warm apple cider and sweet potato pie.

He hated having to relearn everyone’s names. He was never really good with names anyway. For now, he’ll refer to the townsfolk by descriptions such as, “the fat kid,” or “that crotchety old dame with the wonky eye.” Not to their faces, of course.

Settling into the guest bedroom, down the hallway from the others, afforded him a bit of distance. His feelings towards Rick were mixed. He had no benefit of a time buffer from their violent, acrimonious history. The war, Negan’s defeat, his incarceration – wounds still too raw and festered to put behind him yet.

Making needling quips at Rick’s expense came all too natural, but he reminded himself to stop doing that.

Negan would lament the fact that Rick knew everything about him, but he knew so little about Rick. They would go on outings together, walks around town, informal pseudo-dates, trying to get to a place of friendship. Rick would talk mostly, spilling his life story in an attempt to even the imbalance. But when tedium and overbearance took its toll, it didn’t feel like much progress was made.

Rick stored their wedding rings away, the metals clinking inside in a tiny box as he hid them somewhere to be maybe, hopefully, exhumed again someday.

Sometimes Negan wondered if everything would work out, or if he should have left after all.

Packing school lunches felt so common and ordinary to Negan, a man who once presided over an empire, who carried himself larger than life, but in a way it was also grounding and oddly satisfying.

He could see Rick was trying, holding it together by the barest of thread. Even through the ache and grief behind those wounded eyes, Rick was gracious and understanding. It made Negan want to try harder.

On good days, they would share a laugh or a smile, sip coffee on the porch with the morning dew clinging to the wood. They would pick out vegetables from the garden to prepare for dinner, play card games with Judith well into the night until no one could keep their eyes open.

Every time Judith called him ‘Dad’, his heart would melt a little bit.

At some point, things solidified, no longer felt like a surreal dream he would soon wake from. He was not the outsider looking in.

At some point, he could think of Rick without the bitterness of the past.

They could talk, freely and without pretense, about the future, co-parenting, joke about becoming old men in rocking chairs. They could ride horses and hunt ducks at the lake together until sundown, returning home to split a pitcher of a homebrewed beverage.

Negan never recovered his memories, and as time progressed, there was little to no hope of him ever doing so. But he stayed, adapted, integrating into the community just as he had before, fixturing himself into a place of permanence. New memories were made, as Rick had promised. New memories – good, warm and happy ones - replenishing his mental bank of the ones that had been withdrawn.

Things were not the same as before and likely would never be, but it was good. Time was on their side. Time would be the bringer of mending and rebuilding, if only they did not push or pull, or otherwise interfere with the gears of the clock.

On a sunny Sunday morning, the smell of eggs and waffles filled the kitchen, the countertop messy with utensils and puddled batter. Judith giggled as she drowned her food in syrup, receiving a light admonishment of “that’s enough” from Rick. Negan, sitting adjacent to Rick, quirked a smile.

With full bellies and empty plates, they sat and chatted as a family would, in no hurry to clean up or to get on with the duties of the day.

And while Rick and Negan listened to a talkative girl with amusement, they only hoped for more moments like this one, while sharing soft glances and holding hands under the table.


End file.
